Tuesday Tips

This week’s focus is…       MENU

Oh how I love food. After you’ve come up with your theme and your décor, it seems (at least to me) for the menu to come along naturally. I do have a few rules I try stick to. When I throw a party I generally like to have something crunchy you can snack on, something healthy(ish), something you could consider to be what I call “real food” aka something you would eat as part of a main meal, at least 2 drink options, and something deliciously sweet.

Although I try to have some of the food options be theme-specific, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary. People might remember if your food was theme specific, but they’re definitely going to remember if your food was delicious. Don’t feel like you can’t make some of your favorite staples for a party! Make food you would like to eat- especially if you’re hosting. You might just have leftovers. If you’re staple food is steak, or something equally expensive or equally large, try re-thinking how you could make it in a feasible way. Bacon and steak bites anyone? Mini lobster rolls? I’m in.

Now, if you’re going to make theme-specific food you may want to practice beforehand. You can’t be quite sure how the food will look (and taste) if you’ve never made it before. There’s definitely different levels of difficulty when it comes to decorating food. Just think about pumpkins. It’s easier to make the pumpkins in the image on the left than the pumpkin on the right no?                                                                                                  

Same thing goes for food. First option here looks easier too right? Still really pretty and fresh, but much easier. This seems like common sense, but hey- I’ve made this mistake before for sure.

I have also had that “oh that looks delicious” moment right before biting into something that was less than pleasant. Looks can be deceiving so practice can save you from an awkward host moment. Hope you all make something tasty this week! Who knows, dinner tomorrow could turn into next month’s party stand out. As always, click on the pictures if you'd like. Some of them link to really cool recipes.

Note: I’ve had a few questions about the white chocolate stamped Oreos. To be clear- after you dip the Oreo in white chocolate, you put the stamp in the white chocolate and then freeze the cookie before removing the stamp. For some reason this allows the stamp to make the impression without pulling the chocolate off. Also- it only takes about 10-15 minutes to freeze each cookie. I bought a stamp set of 10 so I can make 10 cookies every 15 minutes or so with prep time. Not bad!